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Looking for a Pool and Coming Up Dry as Cities Shave Budgets

Cash-strapped local governments have been making the painful choice to close public pools. At James Mangan Park in Sacramento, the pool grounds are locked, but the pool itself is still full of clear blue water.Credit
Max Whittaker for The New York Times

SACRAMENTO — On a recent balmy afternoon in Sacramento, 10-year-old Olivia Rios stared at her local swimming hole and fondly remembered a summer in the not-so-distant past when there wasn’t a “Pool Closed” sign outside.

“We would go swim every single day,” said Olivia, sitting behind by a wire fence near a “Keep Out” notice. “And we’d get there the next day when it opens.”

There are few things in life more doleful than a child looking at a closed pool on a steamy summer day, and yet that sad scene has become as common as sunburns and mosquito bites as struggling local governments make the painful choice to shut their pools to save the budget. The list of locales where public pools have been in jeopardy in recent years includes some of the sweatiest spots in the nation, including Central Florida (90s and humid on the Fourth), Atlanta (90), and Houston (97).

And while corporate and nonprofit white knights sometimes appear at the last minute to salvage at least some of the summer, some say that the age of free dips on the public dime is increasingly endangered.

And some who have managed to adapt and survive. In Phoenix, where the forecast called for a high of 108 degrees on Wednesday, officials have shuttered a quarter of the city’s 29 pools in each of the past three years — but managed to use a new tax to pay for refurbishing. That will allow all the city’s pools to reopen next year, basically brand new.

Rick Naimark, the deputy city manager, said it was only a recent bump in other revenues that made the plan work. “If the budget this year had continued to deteriorate, we would have had to cut back,” Mr. Naimark said.

While Memorial Day was long considered opening day for public pools in many spots, that holiday now often comes and goes without so much as a game of Marco Polo.

The substantial expenses that accompany public water holes, including lifeguards, training and insurance, often make them “low-hanging fruit” for officials looking for budget fixes, Mr. Beckner said, particularly during the winter negotiations when no one worries about the pool being open. Likewise, public pools are usually used only during the summer, making them an even easier target for bean-counters.

“The bottom line is they are only open three months a year,” said Joe Turner, the director of Parks and Recreation in Houston. “It’s not good, bad or indifferent. It’s just a question of how do you affect the most lives.”

Mr. Turner’s department has faced some of its own problems in recent months. Budget shortfalls forced the city to keep some pools closed earlier this summer, a situation remedied only after Representative Sheila Jackson Lee, Democrat of Texas, helped persuade a pair of petroleum giants — Marathon Oil and ConocoPhillips — to underwrite the pools and a group of community centers.

But such generosity cannot always be counted on. In Pasco County, Fla., which is just north of Tampa, officials were able to stave off a pool closing last year with the help of a nonprofit group, despite declining property tax revenues. This year, however, that well — and the pool — ran dry.

Officials in other urban centers — including Atlanta, Cincinnati and Philadelphia — have also had to close pools, cut back hours or seek alternative financing in recent years. Baltimore counts more than 40 public pools of various sizes (and depths, including wading pools), but has most operating on limited schedules this summer, including some so-called “walk-to pools,” often in poorer areas.

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The question of where pools are closed often raises issues of class and race. In the case of Houston, one of the pools closed in June was in Independence Heights, a historically black neighborhood where the median household income in 2009 was about $27,000, according to city statistics.

The city councilman for the area, Ed Gonzalez, said the loss of a pool there would sting worse than in more well-to-do neighborhoods. “There are no other true community assets out there,” he said. “Your neighborhood park and your pools are the only real amenities that some of these communities have.”

Mr. Gonzalez, a former police officer, said it was not just a matter of letting people beat the heat. The lack of a local pool, he said, could have an impact on public safety. “If kids do not have a productive thing to do, like swimming or community centers to go to,” he said, “it’s more idle time they have on their hands.”

At the same time, public pools are often being asked to do more: in Santa Rosa, Calif., for example, north of San Francisco, the list of activities offered is almost longer than the snack bar menu, including lessons, lap swim, scuba, dive team, water polo and kayak practice. And that does not even include lifeguard training.

Indeed, concerns about liability mean better-trained lifeguards than in decades past, said Mr. Beckner of the recreation and parks association, adding to the cost of running pools. Not to mention making the job kind of a bummer. “You can’t sit around talking to the girls anymore,” Mr. Beckner said. “You actually have to do your job.”

But the biggest enemy of the public pool still seems to be the budget knife. In Sacramento, where the high hit 100 degrees on Independence Day, the city has only 13 pools in operation — including some kiddy pools — down from 21 just four years ago.

Terri Matal, the aquatic supervisor with the Sacramento Parks and Recreation Department, called the closings painful, particularly in an area hit hard by the recession, the foreclosure crisis, high gas prices and cutbacks in state government.

“We especially need them with people being out of work and not even able to drive somewhere for a little recreation,” said Ms. Matal. “People are like, ‘Wait, I’m on furlough and the pool isn’t open?’ ”

At James Mangan Park, a leafy, well-used patch sitting amid middle-class ranch homes, the pool grounds are locked, but the pool itself is still full of clear blue water. That was the sight that taunted Olivia Rios and her friend Jahvae Hicks, 12. “I hate that it’s closed,” Jahvae said.

Olivia, meanwhile, said her 11th birthday was coming up this month and that she had looked at the weather forecast.

“It’s about to get really hot here,” she said. “I want a pool party.”

Correction: July 20, 2011

An article on July 7 about the closing of public pools nationwide because of budget cuts referred incorrectly to the operation of New York City pools in recent years. While the city proposed pool closings in its last two budgets, funds were ultimately provided and all pools were able to remain open; it is not the case that the city had to close pools, cut back hours or seek alternative financing as did several other major cities.

A version of this article appears in print on July 7, 2011, on Page A13 of the New York edition with the headline: Looking for a Pool and Coming Up Dry as Cities Shave Budgets. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe